"Sunglasses After Dark v1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Collins Nancy A)

The other one was talking, asking him questions, but Claude's hearing kept fading in and out. He realized he was suffering from a mild concussion. When he didn't answer their questions, one of them held his arms while the other went to work on his stomach. When the man holding his arms let go, Hagerty collapsed on the ground.
"Who you workin' for, huh? You workin' for Thorne?"
The stranger with the split lip gathered twin handfuls of Hagerty's hair, lifting his head off the ground. The pain was immense and tears streamed from his eyes, but all he could do was stare in stupid fascination at the killer's spoked cuff links.
"Leave it, Frank. Look at him. We're not gonna get anywheres with him. Better just get it over with."
"She's not gonna like it. She'll want to know." Frank's voice took on the whine of a petulant child, but the other waved him quiet.
"What difference does it make as long as he's dead? Here, help me with this bastard. The next train will be along in a few minutes. Christ, this fucker's heavy."
Panic gnawed through the gray cotton of the concussion. Claude wanted to scream, but his tongue had been transformed into a swollen wad of flesh blocking his throat. They were trying to pull him to his feet, one tugging on each arm. Frank was swearing.
Good. If you're going to kill me, the least you can do is get a hernia.
Both men bent over Claude, sweat dripping from their brows and ruining their impassive masks. Hagerty was amazed by the purity of the hatred he felt for these killers. It swelled against his breastbone like a helium balloon. Fine. He would die hating.
The hands emerged from the darkness, moving like moths dancing in the night. They landed on the shoulders of the hit man who'd kicked Hagerty in the head. Hagerty found satisfaction in the look of fear that crossed his attacker's face. The man let go of Hagerty's arm and reached for the gun inside his jacket. He never made it.
The hands snapped upward, the left clamping over his ear and bottom jaw while the right grabbed his forehead and jerked. The sound of breaking vertebrae was like a gunshot.
Frank freed his gun and kept his grip on Claude. Adrenaline gave him the strength to pull Hagerty off the ground and splay him against the car. He kept his hand on Claude's throat while he held his gun inches from the orderly's face.
"Cute trick, whore! Real cute trick. Try anything else and I'll blow your boyfriend's brains all over the fuckin' countryside, understand?" Frank shouted into the dark. His eyes jerked back and forth, but they kept straying to his companion sprawled in the dirt.
There was only laughter in response.
Frank turned and fired in the direction of the sound. The muzzle flashes revealed only gravel train beds and empty boxcars.
The hit man's face was the color of clay. Dark crescents had appeared under his arms. He let go of Hagerty, who managed to stay upright by hugging the hood of the car. Frank wrapped both hands around the grip of his gun and fell into a wary shooter's stance.
She landed on the roof of the car, hissing like a cat. Frank jerked around, his mouth a lipless line, and fired. The bullet struck her in the left shoulder, the impact spinning her backward. Hagerty heard her cry out, then the sound of her body striking the ground on the other side of the car.
Frank stood and blinked at where she had stood, then began to inch his sway around the front of the car, his gun at ready. It was obvious he wasn't worried about Hagerty sneaking up on him from behind or doing anything but falling down.
Frank cleared the hood of the car and stared at where her body should have been.
"Oh, shit."
Her fingers dug into the back of Frank's neck before he had time to realize she was behind him. Her grip was so tight it pinched the nerves, temporarily paralyzing him. She reached around with her free hand and squeezed the wrist on his gunhand. Delicate bones ground together and collapsed, splinters of bone spearing the pulse point. Frank screamed like a girl.
Hagerty wasn't surprised when Frank came flying over the hood of the car. Sonja Blue followed at her leisure, boot heels ringing against Detroit steel.
Frank wallowed in the dirt, clutching his ruined hand to his chest. It was black with congested blood and resembled an inflated surgeon's glove. The hit man's face was white with shock and his lip was bleeding again. He babbled to himself in a sibilant whisper, "Antichrist, Antichrist, Antichrist."
Sonja Blue bent over and grabbed a handful of suit, pulling him upright without any noticeable effort. "Now, is that any way to talk?"
Frank's only answer was a high-pitched, nasal whine.
She dragged him back to where Hagerty stood propped against the car. She glanced at him and Claude saw his own battered, bleeding face reflected in twin mirrors where her eyes should be. Still more sunglasses after dark.
"Tell your playmate good night, Mr. Hagerty." Placing her hand at the base of Frank's skull, she slammed his head against the hood of the car. It sounded like a watermelon dropped on a gong. Frank's body jerked spasmodically under her hands. Claude was reminded of the full-body immersions he had witnessed as a child at the Baptist church his grandparents attended, only there wasn't any water this time. Just a spray of brains and blood and bone.
But that's not what made him faint.
It was when she pulled her lips away from her teeth, revealing canines that belonged in the mouth of a wild animal, and tore open the throat of the ruined thing that had been Frank. That's when he fainted.
Hagerty's dreams were not empty.
He was wandering through a library with bookshelves as tall as skyscrapers. He could hear a train roaring down one of the aisles, its passage shaking the stacks.
He glimpsed movement ahead, where the bookshelves intersected. He didn't want to go any farther, but felt trapped in the book-lined maze.
Two men loitered on either side of the shelves, watching Claude as he
approached. They wore dark suits with narrow lapels and narrower ties. They both wore sunglasses. Claude recognized them as the identical killers. Only they were no longer identical. One of them stood with his head propped against his left shoulder; when he shifted his weight to the other foot, the head lolled onto his chest so that he was staring at his feet. The other's hands resembled a cartoon animal's. His forehead was cracked open and the brains spilling out of the wound ruined the cut of his suit.
They moved in concert to block Claude's path.
"Get out of my way, assholes."
The mismatched killers turned sideways and disappeared. Claude kept moving.
Archie Kalish leaned against one of the bookshelves, smoking a cigarette. Or trying to. Most of the smoke escaped through the ragged hole in his throat. He grinned at Claude, as sleazy in death as he was in life.
"Hey, Hagerty! So what d'ya think? Some kinda piece, huh?"
Claude watched Kalish's larynx vibrate as he spoke. Claude kept walking. Kalish's laughter sounded like whistling.
Dr. Wexler was thumbing through a leather-bound volume of Freud. There was something wrong with his face. He did not offer to speak to Hagerty.
There was a door up ahead. An exit sign glowed over the threshold. Claude picked up his pace. He could see someone waiting for him by the door. A woman.
Denise Thorne looked very sad. Her long, straight hair was the color of raw honey. She was wearing a paisley miniskirt with a buckskin vest, the fringe longer than her dress. She was wearing white go-go boots and held a bouquet of flowers in her hands.
"I told you to get away while you still could," she said.
Claude felt it was important to speak to her. He stopped and tried to touch her shoulder.
Denise Thorne shook her head. "Too late."
Lozenges of mirrored glass dropped from her brow ridge, merging into the cheekbones and sealing away her eyes. Her hair writhed, drawing in on itself. Darkness welled from her scalp, radiating outward like ink in a water glass.
She opened her mouth, letting the lower jaw drop impossibly low, like a snake swallowing an egg. Her teeth were way too long and sharp to fit into a human mouth. Claude could hear the train coming. The whistle blasts sounded like a woman screaming.
And he woke up.